Thursday, January 2, 2014

Stereotypes in American Born Chinese and Wuthering Heights

I can't believe that it would be this possible to hate an archaic book character (in the context of both the novel and today's world) until I met Joseph from Wuthering Heights.  I don't think this'll ever be a full literary and critical thesis of why I hate Joseph but it definitely has the potential to be so.  However if Emily Brontë crafted Joseph to be a despicable character, then she has certainly accomplished that.

I know that some people won't mind him or even skip what he's saying in the novel.  I like to read every word, even if there's no translator for Yorkshire accents.  (This is starting to bring up my inablility of deciphering Liverpool accents in my mind as well.)  Despite being accepting of differences in people, I feel that Joseph's accent is kind of disparagingly stereotypical.  I don't know why but it seems like Joseph is portrayed in the same streotypical way as Chin-Kee is portrayed in American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Though out American Born Chinese, Chin-Kee (shown below) is the manifestation of Asian stereotypes.  He is portrayed as very annoying and insulting in Danny's story.  The unfitting sitcom laughter placed in the racist situations Chin-Kee brings about would be absolutely biting dark comedy if it wasn't for the book's extremely bright color palette.
Chin-Kee from American Born Chinese
 I feel like Brontë is doing the same with Joseph.  For example in Chapter XVII, Hindley ends up hurting himself when trying to shoot Heathcliff through the window.  When Hindley starts bleeding everywhere, Joseph gets pushed onto the ground by Heathcliff to clean up the blood.  Ironically Joseph starts praying instead of being like every other normal servant (let alone human being) who would clean just up the blood.

After some consideration, I think that Brontë is trying to put down older people of her time who are conservative and traditional in their religious views.  Joseph's portrayal of ridiculous and impractical zeal really puts shame onto the character.  Joseph is pretty much a scumbag as far as I can tell.  Plus his actions in Chapter XVII provides situational irony when put side by side with his religious zeal.  Also despite his religiousness, Joseph is a pretty useless human being.  I don't mean to jump to such broad conclusions but how can I stop myself from saying that when Joseph cannot even interact normally with other people?  I'm not even going to go into the instances where Joseph is useless.

I guess connecting to other novels isn't a bad choice when trying to understand other pieces of literature...
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Picture source:
http://mickkrongchon.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/american-born-chinese-chin-kee/

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